Conventionally, when a wireless device is in an out-of-network-service condition, the wireless wide area network (WAN) radio of a wireless device may be configured to reacquire service by continually searching for available WAN coverage for many minutes. When service cannot be reestablished, the wireless device may sleep for a number of minutes before waking to search again. Each time coverage is lost, even after only short periods of resumed communications, the same searching procedure may be executed by the wireless device as soon as another out-of-network-service condition is experienced.
While operating in regions with poor WAN coverage, the wireless device may experience a severe impact to battery service life, as the wireless device may consume significant power when constantly utilizing a long-range transceiver to re-establish WAN communications. For example, the wireless device may consume a high amount of power when searching for cellular network coverage. The battery service life of a wireless device may be shortened the longer the period of poor WAN conditions, as the wireless device may continually and repeatedly expend power to acquire and reacquire WAN service.